Science and technology

Online search

Getting personal

FOR a company that is already the subject of intense scrutiny by antitrust authorities on both sides of the Atlantic, Google seems surprisingly willing to provoke further debate about its dominance of the online-search business. On January 10th the internet giant announced a series of changes to the way its search engine operates that have incensed rivals. The general counsel of Twitter, a micro-blogging service, went so far as to claim in a tweet that search was being “warped” by Google, whose moves represented “a bad day for the internet”.

Google says its new initiative, dubbed “Search, plus Your World”, is designed to help users get even better results from its search engine. But its critics say it should really be called “Search, plus Google+” as the changes seem primarily designed to promote the firm's fledgling social network. One tweak will mean that people who are signed in to Google will now be able to see information gleaned from their Google+ accounts in their private search results. Another means that profiles and Google+ pages of well-known people relevant to search topics will start to appear in results pages. Users may then be able to follow them online. These new social features will initially be available to people searching in English and logged into Google.

The firm's desire to give search a more social flavour is a response to the rise of Facebook, which is encouraging people to find information via their network of online friends. Many people expect the giant social network, which has some 800m active users compared with Google+'s 65m, to push even further into Google's search stronghold in future. By integrating Google+ more closely with its search function, Google is shoring up its defences against such an assault.

It is also trying to boost its revenue. Studies have repeatedly shown that Google is a great source of traffic to social networks, as people click through to them on seeing sparse, publicly available information from the networks flagged in Google's search results. By beefing up the social data it provides in those results, the company is no doubt hoping it can keep some of that traffic—and the advertising revenue it generates—for itself.

But it is also inviting charges of abusing its clout. The firm's critics, including Twitter, argue that it is using its dominance of online search to promote Google+ and to shut out rivals. Some even claim that Google is starting to behave in the same way Microsoft did in the 1990s, when it bundled its Internet Explorer web browser with its Windows operating system, which dominated the personal-computer market. Antitrust authorities ultimately cracked down on that practice.

Such claims come at a sensitive time for Google, which already faces investigation in Europe and America into allegations of unfairly favouring businesses it owns in its search results. In its defence, the company says it has made it easy for people to switch off the new features it is introducing if they do not wish to have a more personalised search experience. And it claims it is willing to include deeper data from other social networks in its search results, but says they are reluctant to share it.

There is something to this. Facebook, in particular, has been determined to keep most of the rich data it is gathering about its users out of competitors' clutches. And although Twitter may squawk about Google's behaviour, it, too, has been reluctant to share more information with a rival. Yet because Google dominates the search business in so many markets and seems determined to grow Google+ aggressively, its latest moves still merit close attention from regulators. The search firm's bosses may not like that, but they should rest assured that it's nothing personal.

There are lots of alternatives to Google searching (Bing, Yahoo, etc) so I don't see this as really comparable to Microsoft's monopolization of operating system/search engine back in the 90's. If Google strays too far from "neutral" searching it's easy for anyone to just try another search engine. They could be playing into the hands of their rivals.

Interesting comparison between MS with Windows and IE and Google with search and Google+. The difference here is that Google has long requested FaceBook and other SNS sites to open up their internal databases to Google crawling and to provide an API for search to restrict results to pages that users can see if they're logged in. FB and the others have generally refused, unlike many subscription information services which allow Google to index them because it drives traffic to them. It's entirely within Google's approach to therefore include Google+ in a personalised access search result set. If FB are worried about whether this might give Google an unfair advantage in SNS, then they could negotiate in good faith to allow Google access to their database on the same kind of basis that subscription news sites have. Only if Google refused to negotiate in good faith there would we be seeing a MS-level of monopoly leveraging. What else is Google to do? Ignore its own SNS because the other major SNS won't allow personalised search access?

For now, the easy way for users to avoid being forced to wade through "social" (and probably irrelevant) search results is to simply not log into Google. As long as Google allows anonymous searching, it will be easy enough to avoid their social marketing games. Although it's true that people value their friends' opinions, if I am considering buying either a high-volume consumer product or a very specialized technical product, why would I possibly believe that my relatively few friends would know more about what product is best for my needs than either the thousands of users who post reviews on Amazon.com, or the experts who discuss it in a trade magazine? If I want to buy a router, for example, am I going to be swayed more by the fact that a model with top reviews at Amazon.com just went on sale for half price at newegg.com, or by a social network posting from one of my friends mentioning that model number?

I contend that Google is useful and successful to the extent that it provides relevant information. When it comes to shopping, which is Google's only meaningful revenue stream, "relevance" means allowing me to select the product that best suits my needs as easily as possible. That means giving access to product specifications, user reviews, and vendor pricing. There is no value that social networking can add to that mix. The chances that some "friend" of mine has used the same product are slim to begin with. Multiply that by the also slim chances that they posted something meaningful about it and that they were sufficiently expert to be accurate in their posting, and all we're left with is an attempt by Google to make search look social for the sake of being social. In terms of information theory, they're raising the noise floor of their search results.

I would agree with your examples, but marketers want to believe that if your friends like something less practical than a router (like a novel, or a skin cream), then you may be more inclined to get it. Hence the push towards to social networking as part of the search mix.

I'm not surprised about what Google is doing - the pressure for growth never stops. But yes, please let me keep my basic, anonymous searching. I dread the idea of living in a bubble where every search is so customized that I never see anything that hasn't had a hundred algorithms already figuring out if it suits my online profile.

The major difference between this situation and the example of Internet Explorer and Windows has to do with the choice factor. In Windows' case, a computer buyer makes the decision to buy a Windows-loaded PC. This decision occurs one time only, and thus Microsoft was seen as cornering that single decision for every person in its favor by bundling IE.

In Google's case, a search engine user makes that same choice every single time they decide to do a search. As a result, that decision is up for competition anytime.

Google giving special attention to its own social network should be seen as a competitive force that should encourage others like Twitter and Facebook to develop ways to create incentive for users to choose engines other than Google. If Google is instead punished for seizing use of its own comparative advantage, the perfectly competitive market gets another wound in its back.

From an antitrust position, I don't see where the problem is right now. there are two quasi-monopolies: Google in search and Facebook in social network. If each tries to break into the other one, so much the better. Google's move is not going to reinforce its search engine position. But if it can somehow (although unlikely) balance the social network market with a second player, so much the better.

I can't really imagine Facebook going the Netscape way, and people shutting down their FB accounts en masse to go to G+. So what is the downside exactly of G+ being promoted, from a public good perspective, I mean?

Google started around the years I was still at Stanford, so it's always been search engine since then but lately, I have been experimenting with Bing b'cos I was a bit annoyed by the search results. For e.g., in the past, when I search for a restaurant, yelp review always came up on the top but later I always found that that I have to scroll down for it. Not only did I read a news about yelp suing google about manipulating the search results. That bit annoys bit. Same thing also happened to tripadvisor. It's like you go to the store asking for a best specific product, instead of giving you the best, the sales person is giving the product he/she gets the most commission, maybe, gone are the days were search are really by popular ranking.

As a result, my search habit subconsciously changes. Bing is my default search, I make special effort to to click on the featured ads on the top even if it means I have to scroll down the page or type the link into url in google. If I want restaurants reviews, I go to yelp; if I want vacation info, I goes tripadvisor; if I want to buy something, I go to Amazon or ebay or the sites directly.

As for the search being more social -- I find myself leaving fewer and fewer status updates in facebook. There are people who like the whole world to know what they are doing every minutes, but I don't think that's true about the majority of the people. I don't want to know every single article others read in facebook (it's a pain you have to turn those off on your own) and I've left almost every group I joined at facebook, including financial times, economist.

I really don't know if social network is going to the HUGE internet revolution. It's nice to finally get connected with long lost friends back in high school etc. But, at the end of the days, I also realize, the people I still enjoy hanging out are those who have always been right by here, not those, I haven't talked to in 10 years.

Google only employs 10% of its workforce in profitable search engine; I hope if things don't work their ways, they don't create minor recession here in bay area.

The 65m users figure seems bloated. This might be the number of registered users, but it feels far from being the number of active users, ie users one would like to read about their "activity" in the search results.

This raises doubts whether the social search will be able to attract new users or remain a useless feature users will ignore or turn off. At least as long as the social element does not include facebook, twitter, linkedin and so on.

I like Google less and less. Anyone remember the original trial when Google helped you search your own papers? The idea was abandoned for obvious reasons of integrity. But it was useful. Why can't one buy a program (hopefully without publicity) which would do precisely that: search thorugh all those documents which pile up in one's computer like paper stacks used to in our archives?

I was going to say Google's not as innovative as it was before, then I remembered its original search engine wasn't anything new either. So let's wait and see if Google stumble upon another successful business model, I'm not betting on it.

Dark Archon: It isn't a question if there are alternatives to searching with Google, there were alternatives to Windows back in the 90's. Linux was available, as was Apple's OS. The issue then was that MS had a dominant portion of the OS marketplace and were leveraging that to make their web browser more competitive. Google is guilty of the same action. Their search engine owns such a large percentage of the marketplace that the verb "To Google" is used by people as a stand in to say that they are searching the net, even when they are using another search engine.

"Some even claim that Google is starting to behave in the same way Microsoft did in the 1990s, when it bundled its Internet Explorer web browser with its Windows operating systems....In its defence, the company says it has made it easy for people to switch off the new features it is introducing if they do not wish to have a more personalised search experience."

Opting out of Internet Explorer simply required that one use a different browser. I suspect the Obama administration's special relationship with Google means it is unlikely to see anti-trust action though.

I know several businesses that have ploughed thousands into Search Engine Optimization to get high in organic results - particularly in the loan/insurance market. I've always warned them that is their entire busienss model is reliant on a single point of failure.. Google. If they change their algorithm, their business model goes down the pan.

This looks pretty much like what may be happening. Google will force them to use a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) model which gives them the revenue that is currently going to the hundreds of thousands of search marketing agencies out here.

Sir, I believe you contradict your statement that "[t]here is no value that social networking can add to that mix."

As you state directly below your statement that friends can submit reviews, you overlook that one of your friends may be an professional that uses the product under review, information you would not have unless stated by the mostly anonymous author in user reviews.